You ready?

I was born ready.

Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. I'm David French with Sarah Isger and we're going to be talking affirmative action.

University of North Carolina mainly and a little dash of Harvard. So here's just to tell you the lay of the land is recording.

We pushed our recording time as far as we reasonably could. And the UNC oral argument is still going on.

So we've been listening to two plus hours of UNC. Harvard and we still have Harvard to go. So here's what we're going to do.

We're going to talk about the UNC oral argument, which had some interesting themes that are common to both cases and some themes that are not, which I think were.

It's very important to pull that apart.

And so we're going to talk about that. We're going to finish the discussion the oral arguments and our pod that record on Wednesday and published on early Thursday morning.

So we're going to do the full spectrum. But for right now we're going to focus on UNC and the common issues between UNC and Harvard and the very interesting approaches, the different justices are taking to this case.

And all of it, including some Sarah's got some thoughts about Michigan. And I mean, yes, Michigan and California, I mean, because briefs in the case, lots to talk about Sarah.

So going to you first, overall impressions or just however do you want it, how do you want to start this?

Well, I think it's worth noting that these cases were consolidated for argument, but they are being treated separately. UNC is a state school. Harvard accepts Title VI federal funding.

So that's why they have their own separate case. Their admissions policies are clearly different. And the record shows a lot of those differences. So why did UNC go first?

Normally Harvard would have gone first in this, I think. But remember that when Justice Jackson gets confirmed, one of the big questions that are hearings is whether she would recuse herself because she served on a board of visitors for Harvard.

And she later said yes, because of that, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have poor Justice Jackson just sitting around because we don't exactly know when the Harvard or a argument would wrap up.

So that actually pushed UNC first. That's why it's UNC Harvard.

I mean, no question in my mind, David, that it absolutely helped both schools to have UNC go first and that they owe Justice Jackson a muffin basket.

Now, let me be clear, none of this was intentional to help the schools. You don't put Justice Jackson on the court because she's on the board of visitors at Harvard because she'll have to recuse herself from this case.

It's just the way that it worked out, but I do think that it very accidentally really helped Harvard to get to what's the what's the term in biking David? Why am I liking on this?

The term in Viking.

Biking, you know, where you were do Strat.

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